I have a 150 page FrameMaker document (with lots of linked Illustrator CS4 files) that is taking 7 MINUTES to print to the default Adobe PDF printer. In contrast, an old QuickSilver / Interleaf document that is 200 pages long and contains even more graphics embedded as huge TIF files, takes 20 seconds to print to the same default Adobe PDF printer.

I have tried all the suggestions I can find on the web, including Adobe forums, but nothing works. Can anyone suggest why printing from FrameMaker 9 to Adobe PDF is taking such a long time? It would appear to be a FrameMaker problem, since every other application can print to the Adobe PDF printer without any problems, and so can FrameMaker... but only at a snail's pace!

Thanks for replying. The thread you mentioned was one of the many I tried, but none of the suggestions worked. It seems the only solution you found was to install a very old driver, is that correct? I don't want to do that when every other program on my PC, Adobe or not, can print perfectly fast to the default, uncustomized Adobe PDF printer.

That points the blame at FrameMaker, or perhaps using linked Illustrator files within FrameMaker. The reason I say this is because when printing, the little FrameMaker print output window clearly shows the process is slowing on the graphics-heavy pages. I'd expect that a bit with any program, but should sending a single page with a little 1.2 MB linked AI file really lock up a 3.0GHz PC for 25 seconds?

Some further tests are necessary. I'll have to waste some time taking one chapter from my book and replacing all the linked AI files with linked SVGs to see if the problem is Illustrator based. If that doesn't work, I'll try TIFs or JPGs...

EDIT: Since writing the above I have tried using a CS3 Illustrator file, an SVG and a TIFF. The CS3 file and the SVG still took 20 seconds to print a single page, but using a TIFF instead caused the page to print almost instantaneously! How can it be that using a vector based file can cause printing to Adobe PDF to be about 20x slower than using a TIF file?

EDIT: Using FrameMaker's Save As PDF... menu option to write the complete book takes around 4m 30s, an improvement over the 7 minutes printing it to the Adobe PDF printer, but still far too slow.

I mean choosing File > Import... > File, then selecting an AI file and using the Import By Reference option. Is this bad practice? I assumed it was the slickest way to insert a picture in FrameMaker, so that double-clicking opens it immediately in Illustrator for modifications, and there's only one AI file rather than an AI source file + SVG pair for every graphic...

I've read that best practice these days is to import graphics by reference so that file sizes don't get bloated. OLE linking got impaired due to security in some O/S's, so I don't think it's much used anymore.

Good, I was hoping I wasn't doing something stupid! But if using "Import By Reference" AI files in a FrameMaker document makes output to PDF so ridiculously slow, it rather defeats the object doesn't it? It's going to be silly having to take a coffee break while my all-Adobe pipeline crawls along for 7 minutes making a PDF for me. I might as well be creating TIF exports of every Illustrator file, and linking the TIFs into the FM document - but that's a messy route that I wanted to avoid.

Since reading some other posts, it seems I'm not the only one with this problem, so I do hope somebody in Adobe has looked into this problem and found the cause. Adobe's R Jacquez has recently been posting about the forthcoming FM10, showing us its "rich-media" facilities, but I dread to think how long it's going to take FM to produce a PDF loaded with video and 3D models.

Many thanks Mike, that is extremely helpful. Now I know the cause of the problem, I realise I'll have to go back to the age old method of exporting every AI file as some other format. As ever I am surprised (but shouldn't be) that everything doesn't just work together in the world of Adobe software, despite paying £x000 for the privelege and £x000 more for every "upgrade".

[A WHILE LATER... So in Illustrator I re-saved all my AI files as "Illustrator EPS" files. In FrameMaker, I then laboriously replaced all my Import By Reference'd AI files with Import By Reference'd EPS files instead. The result? Instead of taking 7 minutes to print my 150 page book, it now takes "only" 5.5 minutes! Does Adobe think that is acceptable, when ancient 10 year old QuickSilver / Interleaf program could print a 200 page book in 20 seconds to the very same Adobe PDF printer?]

Has this been answered anywhere??? I have soooo many problems with this. I have separted sections of one book into 7 books because it takes so long to make a pdf. ....and I mean....15 to 20 minutes for a large doc...maybe 400 pages...that seems crazy to me. ....but I have many illustrator file. Is this still an issue?

I have no answer to this problem. Naturally, you'd expect FrameMaker to fully support Adobe's own flagship vector drawing program, otherwise how are technical writers supposed to include complex diagrams in their work? Do we really have to go through the time-wasting annoyance of using an intermediate format such as .eps, when we've committed to an all-Adobe software route? Did anyone at Adobe ever try printing a large document with lots of AI files imported by reference (typical of many customers' documents) to check if it worked?

There seems to be something very wrong with FrameMaker if it can reduce my high-spec PC to a 20 minute crawl, whereas an archaic program such as Interleaf / QuickSilver running on the same PC can print a longer document (heavily laden with embedded bitmaps) in 20 seconds to the same Acrobat PDF printer.

For what it is worth, saving an Illustrator file to eps is just as good as saving to ai. Both formats are completely editable with Illustrator. Furthermore, double-clicking an imported by reference eps file in a FrameMaker file opens it in Illustrator. There is no need to keep both versions for each illustration. We use eps for almost all illustrations, pdf for others.

I am not sure about AI files, but when one imports an eps file, it is always the size of the bounding box, not the page size.

My PDF creations times are on the order of 20 to 30 minutes for a 300 to 400 page manual. I have always assumed that the long time has to do with the fact that the illustrations are stored on a network drive, there are lost of illustrations, and each illustration includes all the fonts used in it. There may be ways to reduce these times, but I usually use that time to check email, etc.

Van Kurtz: It's interesting to note that you get hopelessly slow PDF creation times too! In my response above, on 29th November, I mentioned trying EPS files instead of AI. They were also extremely slow to print, so I maintain there is a serious problem with printing vector art from FrameMaker to Acrobat. Nobody from Adobe seems to want to supply an answer....

In our case, most of the illustrations are in the 1 to 10 MB range; and there are many illustrations per manual. The illustrations are stored on a network drive, as well as the Frame files themselves. When I create a PDF or a ps file, it is created on the network drive. So, I have always assumed that the time was spent transferring all those files back and forth between the network drive and my computer. The resulting ps file is 300 to 500 MB. Most of the time is spent creating the ps file; the distillation goes rather quickly.

When we had FrameMaker 7.2, the PDF creation times were on the order of 40 to 45 minutes. We got the Archive plugin, which could be used to copy all the files, Frame and eps, to the local computer. This took about 5 minutes or more. Then we could create a PDF without all the network traffic. It still took 10 to 15 minutes. When we upgraded to FrameMaker 9, the PDF creation times went down to 20 minutes or so, which seemed good compared to 45 minutes. So, we just live with it.

Thanks Art, but it seems to be a FM problem. As the others have said, they have the same problems....and I have seen others posting over the months. I was just hoping that maybe someone had found an answer. I can't move all my files back and forth from the network to my desktop to make a pdf. We are talking about100's of vector and image files for just one book and we are printing highlight color. So, I have a color and grayscale version of every image that I have in my manuals. Plus, from what Van said, it seems it doesn't save that much time. Guess I will just wait on the pdf's until this is corrected or just live with it if Adobe can't come up with a solution.

* I bought TS2 and therefore installed FrameMaker 9 and Acrobat 9 at the same time, on a new PC.

* That PC is an Intel Core2Quad 3.0GHz, 4GB RAM, Windows XP SP3. Everything including Windows is fully updated / patched as it should be.

* I was using Illustrator CS4, now CS5, but the same problem exists.

* My ancient QuickSilver / Interleaf program, and any other application, can print extremely fast to the Adobe PDF printer.

Conclusion: FrameMaker is the problem.

Using the same manufacturer's software should guarantee perfect integration and slick performance, which clearly isn't the case. I suspect it's due to FrameMaker having being overlooked for so many years, while Acrobat and others were being bloated with unnecessary features.

What concerns me most is that for FrameMaker 10, I have only seen boasting about new "rich media" capabilities. One wonders how FM10 could possibly deal with "rich media" if it can't even handle extremely lean media - pure vector artwork - written in a language (EPS) that Adobe also created!

The "Adobe PDF" is the Acrobat printer instance. Instead of using the Save As PDF route, try printing to this device and enable the print to file option. Then manually run the Distiller to convert the ps file (or print to a watched folder with Distiller enabled to look for ps files in the desired location).

If you need Bookmarks and interactive feature in the PDF, then check the "Generate Acrobat Data" option in the print window, otherwise for print leave this option unchecked.

Check the Adobe PDF printer Properties > Advanced settings for spooling. Under XP, it should be set for: Start printing after last page is spooled, while under Vista/Win 7 it should be set for Start printing immediately.

Are you certain that it is printing to file? I do catalogues with hundreds of eps graphics and these only take a minute or so to create the ps file (running Distiller itself takes a bit longer and speed does depend upon the complexity and amount of the graphics). FM just dumps the EPS content to the print stream without any handling. On the other hand, if you have included PDF or SVG graphics, then FM has to run these through a conversion filter to create EPS content on output and this requires additional resources in both temp disk space and cpu. If you are pulling your content from network drives, then this will also substantially slow down the print process.

Thank you for your reply. I have tried all the suggestions listed by others, and by yourself above, and my little 76 page A5 document still takes around 4 minutes to print.

Having made the switch to the all-Adobe route of FrameMaker 9 with Illustrator CS4/5 for graphics, I now have to wait several minutes to print a document to the Adobe PDF printer. I cannot understand why using the very latest Adobe software, which should be light years ahead of my old applications, is in fact so hopelessly slow. Surely, importing by reference AI files into FrameMaker should be the cleanest possible way to include vector artwork in a technical manual?

Why doesn't FrameMaker 'understand' AI files? And even accepting that it doesn't, then why is it so slow in its own processing of the AI data?

I do hope that somebody at Adobe is devoting their full attention to researching this fundamental problem with FrameMaker, as it ruins an otherwise excellent application.

Thanks Mike, that definitely sounds like another thing to try. But how do I know if I have the "...PDF creation plugin that comes with FrameMaker" installed? I'm fairly sure I installed TS2 on a 'clean' machine, so I should only have whatever the TS2 installer decided to put on my computer. I don't appear to have a separate Adobe Reader installed.

From your reply it isn't completely clear if you are you importing native .AI format files or files saved in EPS format.

Files in the current native .AI format use a PDF-like structure (that contains a lot more info than a PDF required for display), which FM assumes is a PDF file. When creating output, FM then tries to run this "PDF" format through it's internal filter to create an EPS representation, which takes additional time trying to sort out the Illustrator internal information from the PDF drawing information. The EPSLevelForPlacedPDF setting in the maker.ini file determines how the features are converted. By default this is set to the dumbest level (i.e. ancient Level 1 postscript).

EPS files are just simply dumped straight into the output stream (passed through).

On a fast machine, the resource hit from this sort of conversation may not be too noticeable for the occasional file, but with many .AI files, this could be more noticeable, though I doubt it's solely the cause of the larger times that you're seeing. Usually, if you have a properly configured AdobePDF printer instance set as your system default for FM, work on local drives, use EPS, TIFF, JPEG, PNG imported by reference, print to file to create .PS files, the process is very quick. All I can think of is to use a tool like Process Explorer to monitor what is happening when creating output from FM to try to identify where the slow down is occurring.

After reading all the msgs since Friday. I did try to open all the files in my book and print to a ps file. Took forever. Also, why do you have to reset every document in the book when FM crashes? I have to wait every time when I try these things because I don't want to have to do that. Seems just reseting the book file itself would work.

Anyway, I have attached a jpg of my current programs, add in's....ect. that seem to be maybe things I should get rid of. Would one of you take a look and let me know. Maybe that is my problem. I hope it is readable.

Many thanks for clarifying the situation with AI and FrameMaker. In conclusion, for other users coming to this thread:

* Importing a native .AI file into FrameMaker (using "Import By Reference" in my case) doesn't work as it should.

* FrameMaker doesn't interpret the .AI file correctly as simple vector artwork, but instead as PDF, and so makes very slow work of converting the graphic when printing.

* Outputting from Illustrator as .EPS instead of .AI should be much quicker when imported into FrameMaker, but not necessarily. Other unresolved issues might also cause slow printing.

I do hope a future update patch to FM10 will cure this flaw in FrameMaker's interpretation of AI files. Personally, I am not remotely interested in FM10's 'rich media', but would love it if FrameMaker could properly handle 'lean media', such a vector drawings made in Illustrator.